


Beauty of the Waverider

by by_heart



Series: Life on the Waverider [7]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, The Waverider (DC's Legends of Tomorrow)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 16:02:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14835446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/by_heart/pseuds/by_heart
Summary: Sara is awed at seeing the mechanical workings of the Waverider through Jax's eyes.





	Beauty of the Waverider

Sara pulled the creeper away from the wall with the heel of her boot. She turned to sit on the middle of it, sliding her butt to one end as she lay back and placed her head against the small rest at the other end. She pushed back with her feet until she was squeezed into the tight space next to Jax under a platform that protected some of the intricate inner workings of the Waverider. 

She turned her head in the confined space and smiled. “Extra creeper. Were you expecting company?”

He glanced over at her briefly but didn’t turn away from his work. His elbows were bent into tight angles as he worked with his hands poised over his head in the cramped space. “Nate was here for a bit. He was using it as a skateboard. I don’t think he found my talk of the Waverider’s nuts and bolts very exciting though.”

“Not really his thing,” Sara shrugged lightly.

They lay there side by side in silence for many minutes while Jax continued with whatever he was doing. 

“What are you working on now?” Sara asked softly.

This time, Jax turned slightly toward her. “Doing some rewiring. With everything we put this ship through and ask Gideon monitor for us, it’s important to constantly keep an eye on the wiring and replace anything that gets burned up.” He looked back up even though his hands were tucked away in a small hole that he could barely see into. He was working mostly by feel. “A lot of wiring was damaged after that little trip y’all took into space. Or more specifically, during the burn of re-entry.”

Sara frowned. “That was weeks ago. I didn’t realize we were still recovering from that.”

Jax chuckled and looked over at her. “We’re always recovering from something. This ship hasn’t been in anywhere near good shape probably since the day she was built.”

“How’ve we managed to stay in the sky all this time then?” she wondered.

He shrugged. “A little creativity, a little magic. Me and Gideon make a good team when it comes to finding places we can afford to lose a little power in order to provide it elsewhere.” He maneuvered his arm around until he could reach the wire stripper laying on his chest, then managed to angle back around to stick one end of it in the cavity he was working in. He squeezed the handle and it made a small click. A short piece of green wiring insulation fell onto his chest and he set the tool back down next to it.

“You didn’t even have to see it to know where to cut,” Sara observed, a bit of pride and awe in her tone. 

“Nah. Muscle memory. I know this ship like the back of my hand.” He reached for a piece of wiring that was hanging in the section next to the one he was working in. He threaded it through a hole in the side of the metal, then looked at Sara. “Gimme your hand.” They both twisted and wiggled until Sara was able to reach up to the space Jax had his hand in. He took her left hand in his right and guided it into the space. “This,” he indicated as he nudged her index finger, “is connected to one of four fans in the galley above the fabricator. And this,” he moved her finger slightly, “is connected to the microprocessor in the fabricator itself.”

Sara ran her finger along the wire she’d been directed to. It was rough and misshapen, unlike the first one, which was so smooth it felt like liquid. “It’s damaged,” she observed. “Burned?” she wondered as she turned to face him.

“Yep. And with the insulation on the wiring melted off like that, there’s a risk of it shorting out, which could mean…”

“No more food fabricator,” Sara finished, slight concern in her voice.

“And this army marches on its stomach, so we can’t have that.” He picked up the wire stripper again, this time turning it the opposite direction before wrapping it around a piece of wire. When he squeezed the handle this time, it snipped the wire cleanly in half. He turned it back around, placed it over the wire again, and nodded for Sara to take the handle. “One side cuts the wire, the other side strips it. Go ahead,” he nodded.

Sara gripped the handle and a piece of insulation fell out of the space, landing next to the piece from the previous cut. Sara placed the tool down gently on Jax's chest where it had been before. “And then?” she waited for the next step.

“We’re going to reroute power from the fan to the fabricator. It’ll work fine with one less fan until I can completely replace all of this wiring.” He guided her hand to the small piece of exposed wire. “You pinch it to fan the fibres out just a little,” he guided her fingers, “then twist this end together with the end going to the fabricator.” He held that piece in his hand and joined it with the piece she held. 

Sara focused on the way the thin bits of wire felt, trying to picture them in her mind as she twisted the ends together. “Like that?” she asked when she was done.

“Exactly.” He rested his hands on his chest. “Now we won’t have to worry about the food fabricator giving out on us.”

“Well, I hadn’t been worried about it until thirty seconds ago. I didn’t know it was a possibility until now.” Sara wondered then what other critical systems on the ship needed such attention that she had no idea about. 

Jax smiled and looked over at her. “That’s because it’s your job to worry about all the big decisions and tough calls and keep us alive. It’s my job to make it easier for you to do your job. If there was no way for me to deal with the fabricator before it broke down, then I’d tell you about it. But there’s no sense in reporting every little problem that I  _ can  _ fix.”

Sara nodded. “I suppose so.” And she smiled at the pride she could hear in his voice, the confidence that he had in knowing that he could do this, that he could take care of the ship and fix small problems before they became big ones, and take a small burden off herself and the rest of the team by dealing with it rather than talking about it. 

Jax knew how the Waverider worked. Everything, large and small. He had an aptitude for finding and fixing problems that nobody else even knew existed. He took care of the ship and the team. He did far more than anyone realized. And he was proud of that role he played on the team. He wasn’t just a meta-human, one half of Firestorm, muscle in a fight. He was a self-taught engineer who saw beauty in this strange place they called home and found joy in making sure that that home was the best it could be, physically and functionally speaking. 

Sara saw something special in the way he just  _ knew _ the ship and everything it needed. She saw a small bit of art in it, and realized he must see that same art, only magnified a hundred times over.

“So what do we need to fix next?”

He smiled. “There’s another wire cutter in the toolbox. There’s a whole section of wiring that needs our attention, Captain.”


End file.
